A masterpiece of satire and one of the more controversial films of its day,
TO BE OR NOT TO BE is a brilliant example of how comedy can be as effective in raising
social and political awareness as a serious propaganda film, while still providing
hilarious entertainment.

The film begins in Poland, 1939, where Joseph Tura (Jack Benny), a
tremendously vain Polish actor, and his wife, Maria (Carole Lombard), a conceited national
institution in Warsaw, are starring in an anti-Nazi stage play that subsequently is
censored and replaced with a production of "Hamlet." Maria has taken a fancy to
a young Polish fighter pilot, Sobinski (Robert Stack), who is called to duty when Germany
invades Poland. In England, he and his fellow pilots in the Polish squadron of the RAF bid
farewell to their much-loved mentor, Prof. Siletsky (Stanley Ridges), who confides to them
that he is on a secret mission to Warsaw. Sobinski, however, begins to suspect that
Siletsky is a spy and flies to Warsaw to stop him from keeping an appointment with Nazi
colonel Ehrhardt (Sig Rumann)--an appointment that will destroy the Warsaw underground.
There, Sobinski enlists the aid and special talents of the Tura's theater group to save
and protect the Resistance.

A satire built around a rather complex spy plot and directed with genius
by Ernst Lubitsch, TO BE OR NOT TO BE lampoons the Nazis and paints the Poles as brave
patriots fighting for their land, for whom Hamlet's question "To be or not to
be" takes on national implications. Released in 1942, in the midst of America's
involvement in WWII, the film drew a great deal of criticism from people who felt that
Lubitsch, a German (though he left long before Hitler's rise), was somehow making fun of
the Poles. TO BE OR NOT TO BE is also remembered as the last screen appearance for the
dazzling Lombard, who, just after the film's completion, was killed in a plane crash while
on her way to Hollywood for a war bonds spot on Benny's radio show. TO BE was a perfect
and brash finale to Lombard's great comic genius, especially because of it's examination
of play-acting. Was there ever as playful a spirit on a movie set as Lombard? The film
came from an idea by Melchior Lengyel--as did NINOTCHKA. Mel Brooks's remake of the story
was released in 1983, with Brooks and Anne Bancroft playing the leads. While not as good,
it's a perfectly watchable, if unecessary, tribute to the original, with Bancroft faring
better than Brooks.